Hello, Sorry if this is the wrong place for this.
I am looking to start an online store for some art projects/crafts/stickers mostly as a creative outlet for some of my current frustrations.
Since some kinds of people take art way too personally, I want to take precautions from doxxing or being harassed.
What are some best practices for an online shop? Are there any recommended storefronts or something like that? I’m sure there’s a lot of things I’m not even considering.
Any help would be much appreciated, Thanks
Get a P.O. Box for returns/exchanges, so you don’t have to give out your home address.
Use a VoIP service if you need a business phone #. Callcentric is cheap and reliable.
Use an email redirect service like SimpleLogin or AnonAddy to create an email account that’s just for business, and add it to your PayPal (if you have one & plan on using it) so people don’t see your personal email address on receipts.
I recommend that you think hard and properly access your threat profile. You are likely going to have to pay with either your wallet (eg: some sort of company incorporation, lawyer fees, forwarding services, and other privacy protection services), your time (eg: using “inconvenient” services, managing separate accounts, etc.), or both. It can be draining (in more than one way) and take away some of the joy that you’re intending this to bring you if you do too much to protect yourself. On the other hand, if you do too little then you can overexpose yourself leading to pricey or dangerous situations.
At a minimum, I would recommend incorpating and making sure your name is not publicly tied to the company in any way. You will likely need a person/company/lawyer to be publicly listed as an agent of some sort for the company. You should be able to have someone do this for you for a small-medium sized fee. Once you have that, do everything in the company’s name and ideally with separate phone numbers, email addresses, online accounts, bank accounts, and physical addresses as anything tied directly to you.
Some of that is to protect yourself financially and legally, but there are some obvious privacy benefits as well. Anything beyond that should be dictated by your threat profile.
As always though, follow best practices when it comes to security! Use strong passwords and use multi-factor authentication when possible (or ideally, use passkeys). Don’t reuse passwords (and ideally, don’t reuse email addresses for multiple accounts). Avoid clicking links in messages when possible. Don’t open suspicious documents (especially if they are unexpected). Verify the authenticity of any new person/business you interact with (especially if they contact you first). Be vigilant of all forms of phishing attacks.
Another piece of advice (that you didn’t ask for, sorry!) - if the process of making art is the thing that brings you joy and the materials are not too expenses, then just focus on making the art without selling it (at least for a while). At worst, you will realize that maybe this isn’t as enjoyable as you thought it would be with the added benefit of not needing to deal with all the troubles of working through all the legal/financial/privacy protections. At best, if you decide to get serious about selling it then you’ll have a larger product inventory and better understanding of what you like making most. It may also help you understand what you should price everything at (assuming you’ve made some of the items in larger quantities).
Sell it for Monero on XMRBazaar.com. You can just list your item and don’t have to give any kind of personal information to create the listing or receive payment for the product.
Unfortunately, normal people don’t like crypto because of association with scams. But it’s great as an secondary payment option.
Whatever you do don’t get a domain name (website) and register it with your name and other info they want like email, phone nunber and address. Anyone could whois you and find out all that information in literally 1 second by just typing in your website and it’s usually public data unless you request and pay extra for them to hide your info
Most domain registrars make whois info private by default these days. It’s typically just a toggle. Same with DNSSEC
If your volume is low probably some managed service that handles payments and searchability for you. Like etsy, but I’m not sure if etsy is actually good (anymore?)